Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  Continuing to move without noise, Sir Terence entered his study, closed the door and crossed to his desk. Wearily he dropped into the chair that stood before it, his face drawn and ghastly, his smouldering eyes staring vacantly ahead. On the desk before him lay the letters that he had spent the past hours in writing — one to his wife; another to Tremayne; another to his brother in Ireland; and several others connected with his official duties, making provision for their uninterrupted continuance in the event of his not surviving the encounter.

  Now it happened that amongst the latter there was one that was destined hereafter to play a considerable part; it was a note for the Commissary-General upon a matter that demanded immediate attention, and the only one of all those letters that need now survive. It was marked “Most Urgent,” and had been left by him for delivery first thing in the morning. He pulled open a drawer and swept into it all the letters he had written save that one.

  He locked that drawer; then unlocked another, and took thence a case of pistols. With shaking hands he lifted out one of the weapons to examine it, and all the while, of course, his thoughts were upon his wife and Tremayne. He was considering how well-founded had been his every twinge of jealousy; how wasted, how senseless the reactions of shame that had followed them; how insensate his trust in Tremayne’s honesty, and, above all, with what crafty, treacherous subtlety Tremayne had drawn a red herring across the trail of his suspicions by pretending to an unutterable passion for Sylvia Armytage. It was perhaps that piece of duplicity, worthy, he thought, of the Iscariot himself, that galled Sir Terence now most sorely; that and the memory of his own silly credulity. He had been such a ready dupe. How those two together must have laughed at him! Oh, Tremayne had been very subtle! He had been the friend, the quasi-brother, parading his affection for the Butler family to excuse the familiarities with Lady O’Moy which he had permitted himself under Sir Terence’s very eyes. O’Moy thought of them as he had seen them in the garden on the night of Redondo’s ball, remembered the air of transparent honesty by which that damned hypocrite when discovered had deflected his just resentment.

  Oh, there was no doubt that the treacherous blackguard had been subtle. But — by God! — subtlety should be repaid with subtlety! He would deal with Tremayne as cruelly as Tremayne had dealt with him; and his wanton wife, too, should be repaid in kind. He beheld the way clear, in a flash of wicked inspiration. He put back the pistol, slapped down the lid of the box and replaced it in its drawer.

  He rose, took up the letter to the Commissary-general, stepped briskly to the door and pulled it open.

  “Mullins!” he called sharply. “Are you there? Mullins?”

  Came the sound of a scraping chair, and instantly that door at the end of the corridor was thrown open, and Mullins stood silhouetted against the light behind him. A moment he stood there, then came forward.

  “You called, Sir Terence?”

  “Yes.” Sir Terence’s voice was miraculously calm. His back was to the light and his face in shadow, so that its drawn, haggard look was not perceptible to the butler. “I am going to bed. But first I want you to step across to the sergeant of the guard with this letter for the Commissary-General. Tell him that it is of the utmost importance, and ask him to arrange to have it taken into Lisbon first thing in the morning.”

  Mullins bowed, venerable as an archdeacon in aspect and bearing, as he received the letter from his master: “Certainly, Sir Terence.”

  As he departed Sir Terence turned and slowly paced back to his desk, leaving the door open. His eyes had narrowed; there was a cruel, an almost evil smile on his lips. Of the generous, good-humoured nature imprinted upon his face every sign had vanished. His countenance was a mask of ferocity restrained by intelligence, cold and calculating.

  Oh, he would pay the score that lay between himself and those two who had betrayed him. They should receive treachery for treachery, mockery for mockery, and for dishonour death. They had deemed him an old fool! What was the expression that Samoval had used — Pantaloon in the comedy? Well, well! He had been Pantaloon in the comedy so far. But now they should find him Pantaloon in the tragedy — nay, not Pantaloon at all, but Polichinelle, the sinister jester, the cynical clown, who laughs in murdering. And in anguished silence should they bear the punishment he would mete out to them, or else in no less anguished speech themselves proclaim their own dastardy to the world.

  His wife he beheld now in a new light. It was out of vanity and greed that she had married him, because of the position in the world that he could give her. Having done so, at least she might have kept faith; she might have been honest, and abided by the bargain. If she had not done so, it was because honesty was beyond her shallow nature. He should have seen before what he now saw so clearly. He should have known her for a lovely, empty husk; a silly, fluttering butterfly; a toy; a thing of vanities, emotions, and nothing else.

  Thus Sir Terence, cursing the day when he had mated with a fool. Thus Sir Terence whilst he stood there waiting for the outcry from Mullins that should proclaim the discovery of the body, and afford him a pretext for having the house searched for the slayer. Nor had he long to wait.

  “Sir Terence! Sir Terence! For God’s sake, Sir Terence!” he heard the voice of his old servant. Came the loud crash of the door thrust back until it struck the wall and quick steps along the passage.

  Sir Terence stepped out to meet him.

  “Why, what the devil—” he was beginning in his bluff, normal tones, when the servant, showing a white, scared face, cut him short.

  “A terrible thing, Sir Terence! Oh, the saints protect us, a dreadful thing! This way, sir! There’s a man killed — Count Samoval, I think it is!”

  “What? Where?”

  “Out yonder, in the quadrangle, sir.”

  “But—” Sir Terence checked. “Count Samoval, did ye say? Impossible!” and he went out quickly, followed by the butler.

  In the quadrangle he checked. In the few minutes that were sped since he had left the place the moon had overtopped the roof of the opposite wing, so that full upon the enclosed garden fell now its white light, illumining and revealing.

  There lay the black still form of Samoval supine, his white face staring up into the heavens, and beside him knelt Tremayne, whilst in the balcony above leaned her ladyship. The rope ladder, Sir Terence’s swift glance observed, had disappeared.

  He halted in his advance, standing at gaze a moment. He had hardly expected so much. He had conceived the plan of causing the house to be searched immediately upon Mullins’s discovery of the body. But Tremayne’s rashness in adventuring down in this fashion spared him even that necessity. True, it set up other difficulties. But he was not sure that the matter would not be infinitely more interesting thus.

  He stepped forward, and came to a standstill beside the two — his dead enemy and his living one.

  CHAPTER XIII. POLICHINELLE

  “Why, Ned,” he asked gravely, “what has happened?”

  “It is Samoval,” was Tremayne’s quiet answer. “He is quite dead.”

  He stood up as he spoke, and Sir Terence observed with terrible inward mirth that his tone had the frank and honest ring, his bearing the imperturbable ease which more than once before had imposed upon him as the outward signs of an easy conscience. This secretary of his was a cool scoundrel.

  “Samoval, is it?” said Sir Terence, and went down on one knee beside the body to make a perfunctory examination. Then he looked up at the captain.

  “And how did this happen?”

  “Happen?” echoed Tremayne, realising that the question was being addressed particularly to himself. “That is what I am wondering. I found him here in this condition.”

  “You found him here? Oh, you found him here in this condition! Curious!” Over his shoulder he spoke to the butler: “Mullins, you had better call the guard.” He picked up the slender weapon that lay beside Samoval. “A duelling sword!” Then he looked searchingly about him until his eyes caught
the gleam of the other blade near the wall, where himself he had dropped it. “Ah!” he said, and went to pick it up. “Very odd!” He looked up at the balcony, over the parapet of which his wife was leaning. “Did you see anything, my dear?” he asked, and neither Tremayne nor she detected the faint note of wicked mockery in the question.

  There was a moment’s pause before she answered him, faltering:

  “N-no. I saw nothing.” Sir Terence’s straining ears caught no faintest sound of the voice that had prompted her urgently from behind the curtained windows.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked her.

  “A — a moment only,” she replied, again after a pause. “I — I thought I heard a cry, and — and I came to see what had happened.” Her voice shook with terror; but what she beheld would have been quite enough to account for that.

  The guard filed in through the doors from the official quarters, a sergeant with a halbert in one hand and a lantern in the other, followed by four men, and lastly by Mullins. They halted and came to attention before Sir Terence. And almost at the same moment there was a sharp rattling knock on the wicket in the great closed gates through which Samoval had entered. Startled, but without showing any signs of it, Sir Terence bade Mullins go open, and in a general silence all waited to see who it was that came.

  A tall man, bowing his shoulders to pass under the low lintel of that narrow door, stepped over the sill and into the courtyard. He wore a cocked hat, and as his great cavalry cloak fell open the yellow rays of the sergeant’s lantern gleamed faintly on a British uniform. Presently, as he advanced into the quadrangle, he disclosed the aquiline features of Colquhoun Grant.

  “Good-evening, General. Good-evening, Tremayne,” he greeted one and the other. Then his eyes fell upon the body lying between them. “Samoval, eh? So I am not mistaken in seeking him here. I have had him under very close observation during the past day or two, and when one of my men brought me word tonight that he had left his place at Bispo on foot and alone, going along the upper Alcantara road, If had a notion that he might be coming to Monsanto and I followed. But I hardly expected to find this. How has it happened?”

  “That is what I was just asking Tremayne,” replied Sir Terence. “Mullins discovered him here quite by chance with the body.”

  “Oh!” said Grant, and turned to the captain. “Was it you then—”

  “I?” interrupted Tremayne with sudden violence. He seemed now to become aware for the first time of the gravity of his position. “Certainly not, Colonel Grant. I heard a cry, and I came out to see what it was. I found Samoval here, already dead.”

  “I see,” said Grant. “You were with Sir Terence, then, when this—”

  “Nay,” Sir Terence interrupted. “I have been alone since dinner, clearing up some arrears of work. I was in my study there when Mullins called me to tell me what he had discovered. It looks as if there had been a duel. Look at these swords.” Then he turned to his secretary. “I think, Captain Tremayne,” he said gravely, “that you had better report yourself under arrest to your colonel.”

  Tremayne stiffened suddenly. “Report myself under arrest?” he cried. “My God, Sir Terence, you don’t believe that I—”

  Sir Terence interrupted him. The voice in which he spoke was stern, almost sad; but his eyes gleamed with fiendish mockery the while. It was Polichinelle that spoke — Polichinelle that mocks what time he slays. “What were you doing here?” he asked, and it was like moving the checkmating piece.

  Tremayne stood stricken and silent. He cast a desperate upward glance at the balcony overhead. The answer was so easy, but it would entail delivering Richard Butler to his death. Colonel Grant, following his upward glance, beheld Lady O’Moy for the first time. He bowed, swept off his cocked hat, and “Perhaps her ladyship,” he suggested to Sir Terence, “may have seen something.”

  “I have already asked her,” replied O’Moy.

  And then she herself was feverishly assuring Colonel Grant that she had seen nothing at all, that she had heard a cry and had come out on to the balcony to see what was happening.

  “And was Captain Tremayne here when you came out?” asked O’Moy, the deadly jester.

  “Ye-es,” she faltered. “I was only a moment or two before yourself.”

  “You see?” said Sir Terence heavily to Grant, and Grant, with pursed lips, nodded, his eyes moving from O’Moy to Tremayne.

  “But, Sir Terence,” cried Tremayne, “I give you my word — I swear to you — that I know absolutely nothing of how Samoval met his death.”

  “What were you doing here?” O’Moy asked again, and this time the sinister, menacing note of derision vibrated clearly in the question.

  Tremayne for the first time in his honest, upright life found himself deliberately choosing between truth and falsehood. The truth would clear him — since with that truth he would produce witnesses to it, establishing his movements completely. But the truth would send a man to his death; and so for the sake of that man’s life he was driven into falsehood.

  “I was on my way to see you,” he said.

  “At midnight?” cried Sir Terence on a note of grim doubt. “To what purpose?”

  “Really, Sir Terence, if my word is not sufficient, I refuse to submit to cross-examination.”

  Sir Terence turned to the sergeant of the guard, “How long is it since Captain Tremayne arrived?” he asked.

  The sergeant stood to attention. “Captain Tremayne, sir, arrived rather more than half-an-hour ago. He came in a curricle, which is still waiting at the gates.”

  “Half-an-hour ago, eh?” said Sir Terence, and from Colquhoun Grant there was a sharp and audible intake of breath, expressive either of understanding, or surprise, or both. The adjutant looked at Tremayne again. “As my questions seem only to entangle you further,” he said, “I think you had better do as I suggest without more protests: report yourself under arrest to Colonel Fletcher in the morning, sir.”

  Still Tremayne hesitated for a moment. Then drawing himself up, he saluted curtly. “Very well, sir,” he replied.

  “But, Terence—” cried her ladyship from above.

  “Ah?” said Sir Terence, and he looked up. “You would say — ?” he encouraged her, for she had broken off abruptly, checked again — although none below could guess it — by the one behind who prompted her.

  “Couldn’t you — couldn’t you wait?” she was faltering, compelled to it by his question.

  “Certainly. But for what?” quoth he, grimly sardonic.

  “Wait until you have some explanation,” she concluded lamely.

  “That will be the business of the court-martial,” he answered. “My duty is quite clear and simple; I think. You needn’t wait, Captain Tremayne.”

  And so, without another word, Tremayne turned and departed. The soldiers, in compliance with the short command issued by Sir Terence, took up the body and bore it away to a room in the official quarters; and in their wake went Colonel Grant, after taking his leave of Sir Terence. Her ladyship vanished from the balcony and closed her windows, and finally Sir Terence, followed by Mullins, slowly, with bowed head and dragging steps, reentered the house. In the quadrangle, flooded now by the cold, white light of the moon, all was peace once more. Sir Terence turned into his study, sank into the chair by his desk and sat there awhile staring into vacancy, a diabolical smile upon his handsome, mobile mouth. Gradually the smile faded and horror overspread his face. Finally he flung himself forward and buried his head in his arms.

  There were steps in the hall outside, a quick mutter of voices, and then the door of his study was flung open, and Miss Armytage came sharply to rouse him.

  “Terence! What has happened to Captain Tremayne?”

  He sat up stiffly, as she sped across the room to him. She was wrapped in a blue quilted bed-gown, her dark hair hung in two heavy plaits, and her bare feet had been hastily thrust into slippers.

  Sir Terence looked at her with eyes that were dull and heavy
and that yet seemed to search her white, startled face.

  She set a hand on his shoulder, and looked down into his ravaged, haggard countenance. He seemed suddenly to have been stricken into an old man.

  “Mullins has just told me that Captain Tremayne has been ordered under arrest for — for killing Count Samoval. Is it true? Is it true?” she demanded wildly.

  “It is true,” he answered her, and there was a heavy, sneering curl on his upper lip.

  “But—” She stopped, and put a hand to her throat; she looked as if she would stifle. She sank to her knees beside him, and caught his hand in both her own that were trembling. “Oh, you can’t believe it! Captain Tremayne is not the man to do a murder.”

  “The evidence points to a duel,” he answered dully.

  “A duel!” She looked at him, and then, remembering what had passed that morning between Tremayne and Samoval, remembering, too, Lord Wellington’s edict, “Oh, God!” she gasped. “Why did you let them take him?”

  “They didn’t take him. I ordered him under arrest. He will report himself to Colonel Fletcher in the morning.”

  “You ordered him? You! You, his friend!” Anger, scorn, reproach and sorrow all blending in her voice bore him a clear message.

  He looked down at her most closely, and gradually compassion crept into his face. He set his hands on her shoulders, she suffering it passively, insensibly.

  “You care for him, Sylvia?” he said, between inquiry and wonder. “Well, well! We are both fools together, child. The man is a dastard, a blackguard, a Judas, to be repaid with betrayal for betrayal. Forget him, girl. Believe me, he isn’t worth a thought.”

  “Terence!” She looked in her turn into that distorted face. “Are you mad?” she asked him.

  “Very nearly,” he answered, with a laugh that was horrible to hear.

  She drew back and away from him, bewildered and horrified. Slowly she rose to her feet. She controlled with difficulty the deep emotion swaying her. “Tell me,” she said slowly, speaking with obvious effort, “what will they do to Captain Tremayne?”